After his first official practice as Nets head coach, Lionel Hollins was asked what allowed him to have the kind of sustained success and stability he achieved in Memphis over his four-plus years there.

“Well, they let me stay for a long time,” he said with a smile. “So if you get to stay for a long time, stability comes.”

The Nets are banking on Hollins providing stability, something the franchise has lacked ever since it settled into Brooklyn. He is the franchise’s fourth coach in just three years, and comes into the job a year after the Nets decided rookie coach Jason Kidd was the right man to lead them for the long term — only to have Kidd bolt for the Bucks following a failed power play after one season on the job.

But even as he’s just getting into his new job, the differences between Hollins and his predecessor haven’t taken long to appear, beginning with Hollins’ meeting with reporters at the team’s media day.

Though Kidd would go out of his way not to make news during his press conferences — to be fair, he is far from the only coach to take that approach — Hollins threw out a few memorable one-liners, including one in response to a question about Deron Williams having a reputation of being a “coach-killer.”

“Well, I have a reputation of being a player-killer,” Hollins deadpanned, breaking up the room and then flashing a smile.

It was a moment of candor and humor, things that rarely came up last season, and showed a public glimpse of what Hollins himself referred to as a “weird” sense of humor. But it also was a sign he is comfortable in his own skin, and after a highly successful tenure in Memphis knows he has a formula that can work in the NBA.

That formula is also one that’s noticeably different than the one the Nets had success with last season, when they turned things around with a smallball attack by moving Paul Pierce to power forward and Kevin Garnett to center after Brook Lopez was lost for the season due to a foot injury.

But Hollins has made it clear since taking the job in July he is planning on employing a traditional lineup featuring two legitimate big men on the floor, like the one he had in Memphis, including pairing Garnett and Lopez in the frontcourt, and said the things the Nets were successful with over the second half of the year with the smaller lineup simply aren’t applicable anymore.

“When I was watching [tape of] what they did last year it was watching players,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to watch what they did because it’s really not the same team.

“What I want to do is different from what they did in the past. … If we were small and had no bigs, sure, I would have looked at some of the stuff and keep some of it in, but it wasn’t really necessary.”

The players have already noticed some differences between Hollins and Kidd, as well, even after just one day of practice.

“Lionel’s more seasoned,” Joe Johnson said. “He’s not a rookie. This isn’t his first head-coaching job, as opposed to Jason, who learned on the fly. I enjoyed my time with Jason … it was short-lived, but we moved on, and I’m looking forward to working with [Hollins].”

After a year working on both television and radio talking about the game, Hollins is equally looking forward to getting back in the gym and working with the players.

“It’s just having a plan, and a vision of how you want it being done, how you want it done, how you want the team to be perceived from my perspective, and then having them create an identity on the court for however they play and keep doing it day after day,” Hollins said.

“If it’s successful, they let you stay around a little longer and keep having success and building off it.”
After starting from scratch for a third straight season, the Nets will be hoping Hollins is building off it for years to come.